One more of these, then I think we’ll do something else.
Pretend there’s a plot
Get the Amulet, defeat the bad guy. The first half is in the time travel area… And the second half is in a different area. I’m pretty sure this is the wrong choice, but it’s the one I made. A few UI tweaks later, and you’re playing something that looks suspiciously like Diablo. It wouldn’t be a compete simulation without loot. Unfortunately, nothing you can pick up has any effect on your character. One boss and one town portal later, the second half of the amulet is acquired.
I didn’t feel like coming up with another synonym for Final Fantasy
The evil force reveals his name, and it’s time for a boss fight. Sadly, you can’t win this one, and after a certain point he’ll spam an attack that gets stronger each time he uses it. After which Kaeris follows in the footsteps of her namesake. It’s hard to call this a surprise in any way. You do get to go back to the fight with Kaeris’s heal ability, and a little bonus. This has an animation that is about as over-the top as one would expect from a summon. It also does enough damage to finish the fight in one hit. But we can’t end there, so there’s one more thing to do.
The Final Battle
You have to take an airship the the final boss, but it’s also a wonderful opportunity to clean up anything you might have missed from earlier in the game. In particular, you have bombs and can open passages in the Zelda dungeon. The first form is pretty straightforward. Avoid the bad stuff, beat on the hands. When they’re gone, run around behind and beat on the core. Then get your Ganon shoes on, because you have to reflect his projectiles back to finish him off. There are two colors, and you can only reflect one of them, so I took a few hits figuring that out. Actually, I was pretty bad at that fight all around, but a victory is a victory.
That’s it for Evoland. I wasn’t terribly completionist, and there are a both stars and cards to collect, but I can do without. Maybe I’ll try this for something else later.
Assembling these is kind of fun, so the screenshot posts will continue for a while. Here’s more of Evoland. This is going up later than planned because reasons.
The Next Dimension
When you get the crystal, this happens. With one exception, we’ll be in 3D from here on out. In 3D, you can actually move over things. You also earn the ability to not die in one hit. This is the visual style the game uses from here on out. We’re back to pretending to be Zelda for a bit, including… …a Zelda-style dungeon. Trapped rooms, bombable walls, puzzles, it’s all here. You don’t have bombs yet, so there are some secrets here if you come back later. The boss reminds me more of Ys than Zelda, however.
Ultimate Illusion
At this point the game swerves hard back into Final Fantasy, arriving squarely at FF7. Can you feel the power of the original PlayStation? The funny part is that this section is mostly about getting bombs, so you can move on to the game’s strongest moment. This sections is… not that. Once you get past the FF7 joke, it’s actually kind of annoying. There is this, if you missed FF8 that much.
Spacetime Continuum Disorder
Once you have the bombs, you can move on. To pretend like there’s a plot, this area is withered compared to the start of the game. The gimmick here is that you can switch between the past and present. In the past, you can’t travel over “dimensional stones”. In the present, trees have grown to block your path. You also complete your link outfit by getting a Bow here. Once you have it, you can start messing with the environment. Shoot an arrow through a torch in the past, and… …That tree will no longer exist in the present. This makes for a pretty neat puzzle section. The game’s entire sequel takes this idea and runs with it.
Looks like it’ll take one more to finish this one. See you next time.
